Dave Grohl Opens Up About His Hearing Impairment
Dave Grohl has opened up about his hearing loss, revealing that he’s been lip-reading for years and that wearing a COVID mask has made things worse in the last two years. In a new interview, the Foo Fighters frontman discussed how it affects his life, emphasising that it hasn’t hindered his ability to tune into the details of recording music.
“If you were sitting next to me right here at dinner, I wouldn’t understand a f*****g word you were saying to me the whole f*****g time,” Grohl told The Howard Stern Show. “There’s no way. In a crowded restaurant – that’s the worst.”
He added: “The worst thing about this pandemic s**t is people wearing masks. “I’ve been reading lips for, like, 20 years… I’m a rock musician. I’m f*****g deaf. I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
Despite his hearing impairment, Grohl claims that his decades in the music business have allowed him to carefully identify sounds in the studio.
“When we go in to make a record, and we’re mixing an album, I can hear the slightest little things,” Grohl said. “My ears are still tuned in to certain frequencies, and if I hear something out of tune or a cymbal that’s not bright enough or something like that. In the mix, I can f*****g hear the minutiae of everything we had done to that song.”
He also claims to be able to perform live without using ear monitors. He added that after 31 years of relying on the same audio technician, he now feels confident enough to play without them.
“The problem that I have with [ear monitors] is it removes you from the natural atmosphere sound. I wanna hear the audience in front of me… It messes with your spatial understanding of where you are onstage,” he said.
Meanwhile, Grohl has stated that he plans to release a new thrash metal record on 25th February. The singer was speaking ahead of the band’s supernatrual horror comedy film Studio 666, which is slated to hit theatres on the same day as the band’s album. A song by the fictional band Dream Widow, which appears on the Studio 666 soundtrack, was released last week, and now Grohl has hinted that more new music from the made-up band is on the way.
—Silviya.Y
